CISC
CISC
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VAX Architecture
Virtual Address Extension
bytes
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VAX Architecture
Registers
16 general purpose registers: R0~R15
• each register is 32-bit long
• R15 (PC): Program Counter
• R14 (SP): Stack Pointer
• R13 (FP): Frame Pointer
• R12 (AP): Argument Pointer
• R6~R11: general
• R0~R5: are used by some instructions
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VAX Architecture
Data Formats
• Integers: byte, word, longword, quadword, or
octaword
• Negative integers: 2’s complement representation
• Floating-point: 4~16bytes
• packed decimal: (C:positive, D:negative,
F:unsigned)
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VAX Architecture
Instruction Formats
• variable -length instruction format
Addressing Modes
• register mode
• register deferred mode
• autoincrement and autodecrement modes
• several base relative addressing modes
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VAX Architecture
Instruction Set
The instruction mnemonics are formed by
• a prefix that specifies the type of operation
• a suffix that specifies the data type of the
operands
• a modifier that gives the number of operands
involved
• e.g. ADDW2, MULL3, CVTWL
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VAX Architecture
A single instruction
• saves a designated set of registers
• passes a list of arguments to the procedure
• maintains the stack, frame, and argument
pointers
• sets a mask to enable error traps for arithmetic
operations
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VAX Architecture
Input and Output
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